Monday, 13 March 2017

Alternative Views on the CC Dispensary Closures

I get digital rotten tomatoes thrown at me a lot some days. But for years I bit my tongue and these days my tongue wags too fast for me to catch it between my teeth so here it goes again ...

I can't help but look at the dispensary raid situations and Cannabis Culture closures from more than one angle. I see so many angles here. They force me to urge you to please be careful with your activism.

The laws surrounding the sale and supply of Cannabis in Canada SHOULD be different. However, they remain firm and pushing the envelope can leave you with hands covered in paper cuts. These are cuts that, like criminal records, brand you forever with lifelong future-changing scars.

You have to ask yourself how much the CC closures have to do with Cannabis at all?

Many of us are disheartened by this Project G (so ridiculous I refuse to allow it the digital tag).
We see it as a break in the forward momentum that leads to us having legal storefronts. But I don't think we should be very surprised that the law was upheld--however unjust, and that those who broke it over and over and over and over again, were arrested. If this were a Shakespearean play, we'd all have seen the foreshadowing as time and time again JT told us the law will be upheld.

Aside: HURRY UP WITH REGULATION PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU!!!

It is undeniable that CC has made law enforcement look like a joke. And, law enforcement wasting time and tax-dollars stealing medicinal dried plant products from the market IS a joke. Especially at times on a Sunday--is nothing sacred?

Yet, in my opinion these charges are NOT about your right to consume, buy, or grow Cannabis.

This entire thing is because of the ongoing defiance. We have to ask ourselves, would we be so upset if the one in cuffs was your buddy on the street? Because as far as the law is concerned, CC & buddy on the street are the same thing. That in itself is a cry for regulation! All the buddies on the street providing safe affordable medicine deserve to do so in a storefront NOT just the ones with deep pockets and long distance connections.

This isn't about placing blame or pressure on anyone but those making the rules or in this case,
not making the rules. And as each day more and more baby-boomers get legal to use and possess medicinal Cannabis, they're confused to watch the news and see bags of it being taken out of storefronts by Police!

So, I will attempt to slow my tongue and present this as a loud call for action to our Parliamentary body:

YOU'RE CONFUSING CANADIANS !!!

Is it legal or is it not? The plant grown in the factory is licit but the plant grown in a basement is illicit? What does that even mean? With proper testing, quality control can become an industry and home-grown norm that is only now being implemented by big players like Aurora.

This confusion and lack of transparency puts legal Cannabis patients at risk daily and the snail's pace we're using to finalize recreational legalization is forcing otherwise law-abiding citizens into the position to break the law just to use this plant.

I for one am a law-abiding, tax-paying Canadian and I demand Cannabis dispensing storefronts by summer !!